The Transforming Fire:
The Civil War
• “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about
in any way the social and political equality of the white
and black races.” How can this 1858 statement of
Abraham Lincoln be reconciled with his 1862
Emancipation Proclamation? (88)
• Evaluate the impact of the Civil War on political and
economic developments in the following regions: The
South, the North, the West. Focus your answer on the
period between 1865 and 1900 (03)
• In what ways did African Americans shape the course
and consequences of the Civil War? (09B)
I. Abraham Lincoln and the
Slave Power Conspiracy
• 1858 “House Divided”
speech no
compromise possible
• “Slavocracy”/Slave
Power renationalize
slavery
• 1) territories
• 2) use territories to
extend to North
• Republicans both believed +
pragmatic build support
• 1) Abolitionists
• 2) Racists, esp. workers (free
soilers)
• Not politics nor cultural hatred, but
fear of extension to North
• Lincoln: guilty politician combine
morality + racism to win votes
1860 Election
• Split w/in Democrats Lincoln wins:
minority, sectional Pres.
• (60% voted for someone else: Douglas,
Breckinridge, Bell)
• No electoral votes from South
• 109 counties in South, only 2 for AL
• South (home GW, TJ, JM) faced w/antislavery Pres and loss of power in Fed gov
• South threatened secession if AL wins
don’t take seriously
• South’s conspiracy: Repub willing to
allow/motivate slaves to murder them in
their sleep (party of John Brown)
II. The Secession Crisis
• A. Failure to Compromise
• Crittenden Compromise: amendment
extend Missouri Compromise +
guarantee protection AL refuses: S
bluffing to gain more, have to stand up
now or what next, Cuba?
(Breckinridge)
• Dec. 20, 1860: SC convention to repeal
ratification of Const.
• Feb 1861: 6 others join (AL, MS, FL, GA, LA,
TX) CSA; J. Davis (MS) elected Pres
• Upper South (esp. VA) do not join until
war starts
Secessionist Arguments
• 1) “Despotism of numbers”
• Loss of political power: “sectionalist” Republicans
• 2) Northern interference: JD: “all we ask is to be
left alone”
• Free-soilers, UR, John Brown
• 3) Break southern vassalage
• Build southern economy
• 4) Self-determination
• Southern nationalism S. War for Independence
• 5) Constitutionality
• Constitution a confederation can leave if want
• 6) North will not attack
• Economic suicide: King Cotton
Southern Opposition to
Secession
• Fear of war: where fought, who
die?
• Split slaveholders and non:
yeoman farmers (esp. upcountry
NC) not willing to support
slavery Unionists
• Elections very tight: planters
overrepresented in convention
B. Lincoln’s War?
• 1) Claim: AL nationalist: need war to
create a nation, not just preserve union
rejects Crittenden, keeps troops at Fort
Sumter to provoke S attack
• Other view of Sumter: stalling for pro-Union
uprising
• 2) Most N did not support forcing S to
remain in Union; AL ordered call up of
75,000 militia (no need for Congress
approval: not a war, putting down an
insurrection)
• (compare Vietnam/Iraq)
• 3) Economic: industrial strength
requires national market (Repub
party of industrial workers and
business)
• 4) Failure of republican gov’t and AR
(Gettysburg Address): loss of
election cannot be criteria for
secession rejects South’s claim
about Constitution
•
"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this
continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged
in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so
conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a
great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion
of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their
lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper
that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate,
we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave
men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far
above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note
nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what
they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to
the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so
nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the
great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we
take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the
last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that
these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God
shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the
people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the
earth."
III. War for Union, 1861-2:
Limited War and Anaconda
A. Limited War Aims
• War about slavery (provoked by N refusal to
allow expansion) but NOT to abolish slavery
• Slaves, blacks, some abolitionists thought it
was, but majority white northerners no
• South? Leaders presented war as about
preserving liberty and the legacy of the AR,
not as defense of slavery “‘cause y’all are
down here”
•  Limited goals limited war
• Lincoln + Congress: explicit
declaration war not to abolish
only to return States
• Why? Pragmatist: 1st job to win
war needed border States (KY,
MD, MO): "I hope to have God on
my side, but I must have
Kentucky.”
• All presumed war short + limited
• Battle of Bull Run (July 1861):
untrained Union routed by
Rebels
• Capture some spectators
•  Citizen Army of 500,000 for 3
years
B. Anaconda and “The
Shield of the Union”
• ’61-62: no conclusive results, esp. in
East
• Gen. Winfield Scott: Anaconda Plan +
blockade: public clamor
• Gen. George McClellan: great
organizer/trainer, poor fighter:
overestimates foe 2-3x (esp. REL)
• March ’62 Peninsular Campaign
(Richmond, VA) N appears on verge of
victory Battle 7 Days (20,000 Confed.
casualties to 16,000 Union) withdraws
• McClellan never seemed to understand
that victory = invasion of S
IV. War for Freedom, 18621865: Antietam and
Emancipation
A. “Taking off the Kids’ Gloves”
• Summer ’62: gains in West (KY, TN,
Miss, NO) by Grant + E momentum,
but S continuing to fight
• Growing discontent: Copperheads and
War Democrats; upcoming 1862
congressional elections (Nov)
• Sept. ’62: abandon attrition
strategy Lee invades MD Sept 17,
1862: Battle of Antietam
• 6,300-6,500 killed, 15,000
wounded
• 4x US casualties D-Day;
more than War of 1812,
Mex-Am War, SpanishAmerican War, Indian
wars combined
• Robert Gould Shaw: “It
seems almost as if
nothing could justify a
battle like that of the 17th,
and the horrors
inseparable from it.”
Impacts of Antietam
• 1) Military: shattered Confederate
momentum
• K. Marx (Oct ’62): Antietam “has decided
the fate of the American Civil War”
• 2) Political:
• a) domestic: limited Repub losses Nov.
election maintained control Congress
(lost 34 seats House + governorships,
but gained 5 Senate)
• b) international: ended chances
recognition + support Europe (esp.
Britain)
• 3) Moral: AL:
Antietam sign
God “had
decided this
question in favor
of the slaves”
Emancipation
Proclamation
B. Emancipation
• AL: “Without slavery
the rebellion could
never have existed;
without slavery it could
not continue.”
• Sept 22, 1862 to take
effect Jan 1 1863:
“freed” slaves Confed
controlled areas (not
border states or areas
under U control)
• Attempt bring S back
in: rejoin or lose
slaves (cont. faith
Unionist feeling)
• Still participation
blacks
• 1) Incentive slaves spy for Union
• 2) 500,000 slaves fled massive
manpower shortage (+ desertion
to protect homes)
• Free blacks + runaways
military
• By end: 180,000 had served,
10% total enrollment
• Remarkable: 2nd class soldiers:
segregated units, 1/3 less pay,
work details
• Immense courage +
effectiveness: fighting for liberty
+ terrible treatment as POW
Divisions over
Emancipation
• McClellan: could not “make up
my mind to fight for such an
accursed doctrine as that of a
servile insurrection.”
• “The remedy for political
errors, if any are committed,
is to be found in the action of
the people at the polls.”
• Ran against AL in 1864,
nearly won
• July 1863: NYC draft riots
rage focused on blacks
C. “War is Hell”
• No longer respect prop right
southern civ.destroy anything
might be used by enemy Sherman
March to the Sea
• 1) cut supply line S + Lee; 2) shatter
economic system + break civ will
1863
• Balance shifts permanently to U at
Gettysburg (July 1-3): of 75,000 Rebels,
28,000 casualties (1/3+)
1864
• Grant’s success West Chief
• AL’s response to criticism: “He fights”
• S: short on manpower, supplies, morale, +
desertion Confed collapse J. Davis
used racism to try to motivate: whites
reduced to slavery (fails) proposed
arming blacks in last months (never
implemented)
• April 9 ’65: Lee surrenders at Appomattox
• Still other S armies, but basically end
• S handicap: seceded
for independence, but
then had centralize
authority to wage
war
• Union victory: proved
indivisibility, but how
unite nation + issue
of race?
• Lincoln assassination
(JW Booth) lesser
men left to resolve
V. The Butcher’s Bill
• 750,000 dead on both sides >
WWI + WWII
• Total casualties: 1 million in
nation 31 million
• Why? Overlap new tech + old
tactics; new transportation
(faster replacement); old
medicine: 2 die of disease for
every 1 die battlefield
• Communications tech
horrors send graphically +
quickly to nation
mental/psychological cost
How Explain?
• 1) Political sectionalism (struggle
over West)
• 2) Slavery (moral conflict)
• 3) Clash antithetical systems
• 4) Failure of politicians (Douglas,
Buchanan, etc.)
• 5) Extremists (Garrison, Calhoun)
• 6) No basic causes: “needless” war
of a “blundering generation”
• Came out of forces at work in
American society
• Forces for Division
• 1) Frontier society: in West and in
East (immigration + urbanization)
• 2) Materialism: divisions of wealth
• 3) Individualism: attacks on old
institutions: 2nd GA, utopians,
Jacksonians
• 4) Democracy: erosion elite
candidates chosen for appeal not
statesmanship
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• Forces for Cohesion
1) Nationalism: AR, 1812, Manifest
Destiny
2) Market + Transportation
Revolutions
3) Political System: based on
compromise
4) 2nd GA: national evangelical
movement (product of disorder
seeking new system of control: selfdiscipline)
5) Common experience of dislocation
• Nation torn apart because at
moment of greatest weakness (crisis
West) hit by series shocks (Dred
Scott, J. Brown, etc.)
• Humiliating defeat S +
industrialization of S + N willingness
turn against blacks/reject
emancipationist vision of CW
Reunion over Reconstruction
• The Lost Cause, Gone With the Wind,
Civil War reenactments